Tag: politics

At a political event in rural Cedar Township one attendee said to me Phil Hemingway had a good chance of winning the supervisor election in District 2 of Johnson County. The Republican may win that township. Trump won the area in 2024, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks won there in 2022, including in my precinct, also located in the northeast corner of liberal Johnson County. There is more to the story.

Hemingway has run for office so many times I lost count. He hasn’t changed much, if anything in his policy positions and campaign rhetoric. I’m confident Republicans like him for that, yet his brand of what I will call “doctrinaire consistency” indicates he is out of touch with Johnson County voters. This is evidenced by his repeated losses while running for supervisor.

If he were a serious candidate, there would be some evidence of modifying his message to accommodate voter feedback. Instead, he relies upon a familiar set of policy positions and critiques of government that remained unchanged over multiple campaigns.

Things do change in Johnson County. Not least of the changes was a law Republicans like Hemingway helped craft that divided the county into supervisor districts. The idea was rural parts of the county would get better representation. While he may have made his colleagues happy by his contributions to bringing this policy idea into law, there is little evidence it will work, based on the districts created by the Legislative Services Agency.

The precinct level voting across District 2 show a consistent pattern in both 2022 and 2024. (Data is publicly available on the Johnson County Auditor website). While Republican candidates perform strongly in rural townships—Cedar, Fremont-Lincoln-Lone Tree, and Big Grove-Solon Annex—the margins are not large enough to offset overwhelming Democratic advantages in Iowa City precincts. In other words, all the work done by Hemingway and others to create this supervisor district election was for naught.

A review of Hemingway’s public record—especially in light of his 2021 defeat to Jon Green—shows a political persona defined more by consistency than evolution. Across multiple campaigns and in his earlier service on the Iowa City school board, Hemingway maintained a stable set of themes, rhetorical habits, and political positioning. What has changed since 2021 is limited.

The Cedar Township event attendee next said to me, “Well, he was elected to the school board.” Indeed he was. I first encountered Hemingway at the Iowa City Community School Board meetings where I was a reporter for the North Liberty Leader. I remember him as something of a gadfly who liked to hear himself speak and frequently asked questions at the public meeting. I saw no questions of his had substantial impact on the board’s actions.

I was finished at the North Liberty Leader when Hemingway was elected to the school board. There is some public record of his proposals related mainly to budget. Sometimes he made vague assertions about policy, as many Republicans do. Because his was a minority view, the board continued to do their work without taking him seriously. I would like to know how many 6-1 votes there were with him being the one. Others tell me there were more than a few.

Data and math kill his chances in the upcoming supervisor election.

The distribution of votes across District 2 raises a structural problem for a candidate like Hemingway. His base of support is geographically concentrated and numerically limited, while the opposition vote is both larger and more efficiently distributed across the district. Under these conditions, repeating the same campaign strategy is unlikely to produce a different outcome.

Hemingway continues to use the same tools he has from his earliest campaigns, expecting different results. He should put away his hammer if he wants a chance at winning because every problem is not a nail.

The creation of supervisor districts was intended, in part, to amplify rural representation. However, District 2 illustrates the limits of that approach. Even with rural precincts grouped together, the inclusion of multiple high-turnout Iowa City precincts creates a built-in advantage for Democratic candidates. The result is not a competitive balance, but a district where electoral outcomes are relatively predictable.

I predict the winner of the June 2 primary between Democrats Jessica Andino, Janet Godwin, and Jon Green will also easily win the November general election.

After talking with the three candidates for Johnson County Supervisor in District 2, I decided to support Jon Green in the June 2 Democratic primary. All three would make great supervisors, but Jon, the incumbent, is the person who worked to gain consensus among board members on building a new jail. That was difficult work, and I support his re-election so he can finish it.

It’s no more complicated than that.

The Republican in this race is Phil Hemingway. When I was covering Iowa City Community School District board meetings for the North Liberty Leader, I listened to him ask questions — often multiple ones at each board meeting. He was engaged and once won election to the school board.

I looked at historical voting numbers in the precincts that make up new District 2, and the votes are there to defeat Hemingway resoundingly in his sixth bid for supervisor — badly enough that he will never run for this office again. That would free him to return to automotive work until he retires.

I am working for Green to win the primary. If he doesn’t, whoever does will have my full support.

With the county convention in the rear view mirror, it’s time to organize for the Democratic primary. Our votes are important, yet three races are at the top of the list here: the U.S. Senate race between Zach Wahls and Josh Turek, and the District 2 county supervisor race between Jessica Andino, Janet Godwin and incumbent Jon Green lead. The U.S. House race matters, yet Christina Bohannan is widely expected to win the primary over challenger Travis Terrell. It’s her third go-around, so she should. My main work this week has been organizing a supervisor meet and greet event this afternoon at the Solon Public Library. After that, it is a mad rush to the June 2 primary.

There was no competition in Johnson County to be a delegate to the district and state conventions and that’s okay. I decided not to advance to district either. There are too many other things begging for our attention to engage in rituals. The thrill is gone from Democratic conventions, and that too, is okay. Promoting Democratic policy in our communities is where most of the action will be in 2026, I predict.

What does that mean?

Partly, it means participating in campaigns. It also means talking to voters about the race and why it is important to support Democrats. The latter is not a given and this graphic of results from the 2024 general election in my precinct tells why:

Race	Republican	Democrat
President	Trump	Harris
	699	598
U.S. House	Miller-Meeks	Bohannan
	700	617
State Senator	Driscoll	Chabal
	741	526
State Representative	Lawler	Gorsh
	716	545

We voted Obama twice and Trump three times shifting from blue to solidly Republican. The numbers suggest it is possible to turn that around but not without significant work. My first order of business is to figure out which activists remain after we suffered some people becoming less active, moving out of the precinct, and dying.

Once more activists are located, the next step is finding ways to talk to neighbors and then convert them, if possible, to turn the precinct from red to blue.

There are two parts to this, in my precinct, and in the rest of the state and country. Both run through the ballot box.

The first is voting: making sure we take care of ourselves by checking our registration and then voting in person, either early or on election day. Encourage everyone we know to do likewise.

The second is changing the public narrative about life in Iowa and in the United States. We should not accept narratives being fed to us by media outlets, churches, interest groups, and political parties. Rather, we should develop our own new narratives that reflect how we live despite our differences. I predict this will change how we vote.

If we can do those things, there is a chance to make society a better place to live, possibly this election cycle.

Now it’s a matter of getting out there and doing it.

114 delegates to the Johnson County Democratic Convention gathered on Saturday, March 21, at Iowa City West High School. It was an intense day of political conversations, which physically drained me. Here are my favorite photos.

When Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 75 into law on April 1, 2025, a crowd of Republican well-wishers was present.

Senate File 75 mandates that Iowa counties containing a Board of Regents university — specifically Johnson, Story, and Black Hawk — change their county supervisor elections from an at-large to a district-based system. The law has gone into effect and we are working through the new process.

Those at the signing ceremony included one Phil Hemingway who ran repeatedly and unsuccessfully for supervisor in Johnson County where I live. Hemingway backed this legislation. This week he filed for election to the Johnson County board of supervisors again, this time in newly created District 2. His is the bellwether race to see if Republican ideas on this prevail. Can they win a seat on the now all-Democratic board?

“Important to me personally was the passage of the county supervisor election reform bill,” Republican State Senator Dawn Driscoll said, “which protects the voices of our full-time residents in counties with large student populations.”

Driscoll’s colleague Republican State Representative Judd Lawler was not far behind.

“This legislation will improve local representation and accountability at the county level,” he said. “By using districts in these counties, the law promotes a more fair representation structure. This is particularly important in areas with highly transient populations, as it allows for better representation of all county residents, particularly rural and small-town residents.”

Driscoll and Lawler both represent parts of Johnson County.

Opponents, including local officials, argued the law targets specific areas and violates county home rule principles. A lawsuit filed in late 2025 challenged the law’s constitutionality, claiming it violates equal protection.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the law does not impede any voter rights and that the state has a legitimate regulatory interest in differentiating counties that host a regents-led university. The court rejected the motion.

“While the matter may be appropriate for disposition on summary judgment, the Court is not persuaded that it is the exceptional type of case that is appropriate for dismissal at the pre-answer stage of litigation. Therefore, Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss should be denied,” the ruling states.

The district court also denied the motion for a temporary injunction which would have immediately blocked the law from going into effect. A non-jury trial is set to begin on March 3, 2027, long after the first election under the new process.

The horse seems out of the proverbial barn.

Even if plaintiffs win the case at trial, what happens next? That will be up to the judge. My Kentucky windage best shot is the new law is here to stay because if they were inclined to stop it, the court would have granted the injunction.

In the meanwhile, my small group of Democrats is organizing a get to know the supervisor candidate event in the new District 2, on March 28, at 1 p.m. at the Solon Public Library. Three Democratic candidates filed: incumbent Jon Green, Janet Godwin, and Jessica Andino. The winner of the June 2, primary will face Hemingway during the November general election.